The future of flipping burgers

Tuesday

Last week, I saw the future of flipping hamburgers — and most every other type of fast food. It was at a restaurant called Eatsa at 1626 K Street in Washington, D.C.

It was fascinating and frightening, for a whole lot of reasons, especially for fast food workers in South Carolina and everywhere else.

First, a little background.

I’ve been interested in the impact of technology on the restaurant business for a few years now. Because so much of our economy is based on tourism, we have lots of restaurant jobs in our state. There are 7,800 restaurants and bars with 197,000 jobs, or 11 percent of our economy.

About two years ago, I happened into a restaurant in Myrtle Beach called the Eggs Up Grill. The waitress took down our orders on her iPhone, which sent them to a screen in the kitchen. It was pretty interesting stuff.

Then I found out the whole thing was linked up to the restaurant’s inventory system for eggs, bacon, etc., and ultimately its suppliers.

It’s called supply chain management. Though it’s not a new thing, the fact that the technology had filtered down to a mom and pop restaurant was surprising to me.

Back to Eatsa. When I walked into the restaurant, it looked and felt different — kind of weird.

There was a bank of 12 to 15 kiosks with iPads against the right wall, several rows of brightly-lit little shelves with glass doors across the back wall, a few tables and chairs on the left and a long standup table down the middle.

The walls were essentially bare, with lots of stainless steel, glass and mirrors. It was spooky quiet, with just a little light funky elevator music playing in the background.

There was only one employee and one girl at a table eating. The restaurant guy was leaning against the long table playing on an iPad that had a connecting ear piece.

That’s it; one guy.

A few words with iPad man sent me to the bank of kiosks. I swiped a credit card, scrolled through the menu, made my food and drink selection and hit "order." In a flash, my name and a number came up on a blue screen beside the little shelves with the clear glass doors.

I went over to talk to iPad man, but before three minutes had passed my food showed up on the shelf. As instructed, I tapped twice on the top right corner of the glass door, it flipped open and I retrieved my food.

That’s it; quick and easy.

As I sat eating my food, several folks came in, tapped on their cellphones, got their food from behind a glass door and left. For others, the food was behind the glass door even before they waked into the restaurant.

Welcome to the future of fast food.

After I ate, I ambled over to talk with iPad man. He was quite happy to talk, as he was pretty bored. Here’s what I learned:

The restaurant was started in 2015 in San Francisco. There are three locations in San Francisco, two in New York and two in Washington.

The whole restaurant runs with just five people: iPad man and four people in the back. (They would not let me look in the back.) The whole food preparation process is done by robots.

The people in the back just sort of watch the robots, wipe up any spilled food, tinker with and calibrate the robots, and just sort of be there in case something happens. iPad man says nothing ever does.

They open early and stay open late. The breakfast meals go for about $3 and it’s hard to spend more than $8-9 on a whole meal during other hours. The choices are fairly limited, all the dishes are served in a bowl, and the whole menu is vegetarian.

They are very quick. Some orders come up in less than a minute and never more than three or four. They serve 350 to 400 people a day, with most being carry-outs.

And the food was good — not out of this world great, but good enough. It was good enough that more than half the customers come in once or twice a week.

It was mostly dishes like quinoa, stir-fried with arugula, parsnips and red curry. Most customers work in nearby office buildings and are in a hurry to get back to their desks.

The whole experience reminded me of the "Jetsons" cartoon show of my youth.

The idea of cutting costs in the restaurant business is nothing new. Some old-timers may remember Horn & Hardart automats in New York; the last one closed in 1991. And the ultimate reduction in labor costs is the vending machine.

Eatsa is the logical, radical extension of this concept, enabled by robots, digital technology and ubiquitous mobile phones.

The scary part of all this, particularly for South Carolinians, is what it could mean for fast food workers.

There are about 72,000 fast food workers in our state. On average, they work 24 hours a week and have an annual salary of $11,000. And they are not just a bunch of kids earning spending money. About 25 percent are parents with kids and 40 percent are 25 years old or older.

The average wage is less than $9 an hour. iPad man said he makes $12-15 an hour, but there are only five employees at Eatsa vs. 15 per shift at most fast food restaurants. Pretty compelling math.

Every McDonalds and Burger King isn’t going to look like an Eatsa any time soon. The whole thing may flop, but the trend is clear: More technology and fewer people equal lower costs.

And because have done such a poor job of educating our workforce, a very large segment of our economy is relegated to low-wage jobs. There are even many high school graduates who can’t qualify for restaurant jobs.

Checking just one job board, I found openings for 752 restaurant jobs in Columbia, 635 in Charleston and 552 in Myrtle Beach. Yet, there are more than 100,000 people unemployed in the state today.

Like most every other problem we have in this state, it all comes down to improving education so that our children can qualify for real jobs with a real future.

Flipping hamburgers is not, and never will be, how we build a better economy for our people.

We can do better.

Phil Noble has a technology firm in Charleston, is co-founder of EnvisionSC and writes a weekly column for the S.C. Press Association.